


Flicker

by leigh57



Category: Law & Order: SVU
Genre: F/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-03-01
Updated: 2013-03-01
Packaged: 2017-12-04 00:01:48
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 13,669
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/704158
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/leigh57/pseuds/leigh57
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Elliot and Olivia have sex. So then what? (Seriously, that's the summary.)</p>
            </blockquote>





	Flicker

**Author's Note:**

> More stuff from a million years ago that I'm popping up here for archival reasons.

 *******************************************

 

On any normal morning, after working his third sixteen hour day in a row, getting maybe two hours of broken sleep, and having yet to taste the twenty ounce cup of coffee clutched in his left hand, Elliot wouldn’t have wanted to speak to anyone for a solid hour. Possibly two. On any normal morning, he would have been thinking about any one of a hundred boring, mundane items that he probably should have checked off his mental to-do list a week ago. Even a month.

 

_Call Kathy to make sure she’d taken the Chevy in for its 75,000 mile maintenance. And give her the 10% off coupon. Ask Maureen if she’d remembered to downgrade her meal plan from three a day to two, since she never got up in time for breakfast anyway, and he was sick of paying for crappy food she didn’t even eat. Check the LUDs for Frank Mitchell’s home phone, to see if they could get any traction on the rape case that had Munch sleeping in the crib and Olivia forgetting to eat unless someone actually sat food in front of her and took off the cling wrap._

 

Yet it wasn’t a normal morning, and Elliot wasn’t thinking about any of those things. As he jammed his shoulder against the doors of the 1-6, trying not to spill the coffee in his left hand or the tea in his right, he simply wondered how it was possible to be so exhausted that he felt sick to his stomach, yet so fully awake he could have sworn he wouldn’t sleep for a week.

 

But mostly, he was thinking about the two events that made this anything but a normal morning. Last night, for the first time in his life, he’d had sex with a woman who wasn’t Kathy.

 

And last night, he’d had sex with Olivia.

 

Wait. Did that count as one or two? Whatever. He just wanted to put the tea in Olivia’s hand, look her in the eyes, and get the first ten seconds over with. Then he could start thinking about car service and LUDs again.

 

Maybe.

 

Then again, maybe he’d start thinking about the feel of her fingers on the buttons of his shirt. Or the fact that the skin on her stomach was so soft that he hadn’t been able to stop smoothing his thumb back and forth, just above the curve of her waist, before he slipped his fingers underneath the. . . _Fuck._ He heard the distinctive rhythmic pattern of her shoes tapping the floor, the sound he simultaneously anticipated and dreaded, the decibels escalating as she neared the door.

 

Olivia walked in, looking, well, like shit. Her blouse was wrinkled (though it wasn’t the same one she’d had on yesterday – he knew this), and haphazardly tucked into her wool slacks. Her eyes were bloodshot, and traces of yesterday’s mascara accented the purple circles she hadn’t bothered to cover up. She clutched the edges of her coat even though the thermostat had broken overnight and it had to be pushing eighty degrees in the squad room. But her stride had the same in-your-face confidence as it always did, and she wasn’t fidgeting, which was more than he could say for himself.

 

 _I’m just going home to grab a shower. I’ll see you at work in a couple hours_.

 

Elliot knew it wasn’t possible, but even across the room he could have sworn he smelled whatever body spray she’d been wearing the night before. At one point, he’d noticed that the inside of her thigh smelled just the same as the pulse point on her neck, and when she’d gone, he’d rolled over into his sheets and wondered how many washings it might take before the scent left completely. If it ever would. Immediately after, he wondered if he’d suffered some sort of massive head injury that caused him to consider the scent of his sheets.

 

 _Don’t think Stabler. Give her the tea. Talk about work. Talk about LUDs. Talk about some goddamn thing._ He forced himself to look directly at her and said, “Hey,” hoping that his voice didn’t sound as uncertain to her as it did to him. But the first word was out; that alone had to be progress.

 

“Hey.” She smiled tiredly, her expression a puzzling mixture of amusement and fear. She loosened her death grip on her coat and took another step toward him, clearing her throat before she spoke again. “I wanted to ask you about. . . “ She didn’t get any further.

 

“Stabler. My office. Yesterday.” Cragen stood by his door, pale, scowling, and wearing the same outfit he’d had on last night.

 

Exhaling to drag his tension level down a notch, Elliot shrugged imperceptibly at Olivia. Her expression was unreadable, and he reluctantly turned to follow his boss’ barked orders.

 

Stopping a few feet inside Cragen’s door, Elliot realized that he was still holding both his own beverage and Olivia’s, but as he tried to figure out what he might do about that, it occurred to him that he’d already missed at least Cragen’s first sentence, if not more. _Shit. Focus_.

 

“So this guy Cooper is on death row and spends most of his time in solitary, but a few years back he shared a cell with Frank Mitchell. The local PD insists that we’re wasting our time talking to this lowlife, but we’re running out of options and I’ll risk the wrath of One PP if we can get anything to point us in the right direction here.” Cragen pulled a rectangular envelope off the corner of his desk and extended it toward Elliot. “Your ticket to Denver. Plane leaves in two hours, so grab what’s in your locker and go. You won’t be staying more than a night anyway.”

 

Elliot swallowed. So much for his plan, which had gone something like this: Survive the day working with Olivia without being able to address anything about last night. Then, go out for a drink in neutral territory (where there was no danger they’d wind up naked again) and try to figure out what the fuck had happened.

 

Cragen cleared his throat loudly. “There a problem, Elliot?” He was still holding the ticket in front of him.

 

“No. No problem.” Elliot quickly set Olivia’s tea on the desk, grabbed the ticket, stuffed it into his pocket, and picked the tea up again. He wondered if, in five years, he’d think this was all hysterically funny. Since Cragen seemed to be waiting for him to elaborate, Elliot added, “I’ll uh, call if I get anything. What time is the interview?”

 

Cragen stepped behind his desk and shuffled several papers before he picked one up and studied it for a moment. “Six. So get your ass out of here.”

 

Elliot walked back into the bullpen, his stomach icy. The drinks that had been warm when he purchased them were now markedly cooler against his palms, which pissed him off because he had _really_ wanted to bring Olivia hot tea that morning. Approaching their desks, he found her staring intently at her computer screen, tapping a pen against the rim of her empty mug. He hated those guys who could unfailingly come up with perfect phrases, yet at this exact moment, he wouldn’t have minded the gift of a little eloquence. But he didn’t have it and there was no time anyway, so he opted for the rip off the Band-Aid approach.

 

“I’m catching a plane for Denver in an hour. Gotta interview one of Mitchell’s former cellmates.” He coughed, willing his voice to drop back into its normal register before Fin or Munch started wondering what the fuck was up with him. “I’ll uh, call and update you when I’ve got anything new.”

 

Her tapping pen stilled. Elliot silently cursed; since his hands were full, he couldn’t ball them into fists to distract himself while he waited for her to open her mouth. After what couldn’t have been more than a couple seconds, she said, her voice irritatingly perkier than it would have been on any other day at this hour, “Okay. Yeah. Just call when you know something. I’m gonna go through these LUDs. Fin and I will track down anything that turns up.” Hesitatingly only slightly, she turned back toward her computer.

 

 _Shit. Could this situation suck any more_? He wanted to say any one of a dozen things, but each one, on second thought, sounded cold, presumptuous, or just idiotic. Rolling his neck slightly to shake off his twelve alternate realities, he leaned forward and put the tea on her desk. “Thought you might need this. I’ll catch you later.” He didn’t wait for a response before he turned and beat it for the door, focusing on the image of himself sitting in the back of a cab, sipping coffee and avoiding the entire fucked up mess for at least another few hours.

 

It was only when he stepped out onto the street and took a deep breath of the uncharacteristically cold air that he realized he’d given her his coffee instead of her tea. Smooth.

 

_You are a fucking asshole._

 

_________________

 

Inside the precinct, Olivia gazed intently at her computer screen, wondering why, after all the years she’d spent at this job, in this room, at this exact desk, sitting in this chair with the rogue wheel that fell off if you leaned the wrong way when you got up, there were still a few things left that made her incapable of shutting off her brain and just doing the work. She _wanted_ to do the work. God she wanted to. She wanted to empty her mind and think about absolutely nothing except the neat rows of numbers lined up in front of her. She wanted to go through each one and concentrate every last ounce of mental energy she had left on the minute details, the seemingly insignificant connections that often broke open a case. And while she wasn’t given to lengthy flights of introspection or self-hatred, in this particular instance, she was royally pissed off at herself that no matter how fucking hard she tried, she couldn’t do it.

 

When Elliot had walked out the door, she’d given herself sixty seconds, figuring that wasn’t _too_ much to ask. When she’d taken a large swig from the off-white container and realized Elliot’s mistake (taking a moment to smirk because she knew how much he hated tea), she’d even continued to drink the coffee, because what the hell, and maybe it would help her to focus.

 

But it hadn’t.

 

She still sat quietly, appearing, she was sure – to anyone who happened to be looking – as if she were in deep and virtually unbreakable communion with the spreadsheet before her. She wasn’t. She was thinking about what had happened at 2 a.m., when she had dropped by Elliot’s apartment to bring him a couple of files he swore he _had_ to look over before morning, and had somehow wound up in his bed, going at it with a level of enthusiasm she couldn’t recall having since she was a teenager.

 

She put her head in her hands, rubbing her temples. Who the hell was she kidding? Not even then. And all because she’d offered to take the files instead of Munch.

 

_________________

 

“Elliot! Open the door. It’s freezing out here and I’m tired.” Olivia yanked off her glove and knocked again, hoping that her bare knuckles would be louder than the muffled sound of her fingers through the wool. She swallowed, noticing that her throat was a little scratchy, and wondered if she was getting a cold. Wouldn’t be surprising, since she’d probably managed less than eight hours of sleep spread out over the past three nights, not to mention forgetting her morning Vitamin C. She heard the thud of footsteps approaching the door and refocused her attention on the present. The moment she handed Elliot these damn files she could go home, brush her teeth, scrub her face, and throw herself into bed for at least a momentary respite from this case.

 

Elliot pulled the door open and stared at her, looking as if he’d pushed the wrong button on his remote and wound up watching SoapNet instead of CNN. “Munch said he was bringing the files.”

 

Olivia exhaled in a rush, her already sky high level of annoyance rising even further. She stepped inside, but she could smell the beer on his breath before she even moved. “He was. But he got a phone call and I was leaving anyway, so I offered.” She glanced around Elliot’s tiny living room, absorbing the evidence. Three empty beer bottles stood lined up on the coffee table, and a fourth sat open by the couch, already missing at least a third of its contents. The dark brown suit Elliot had left work in was thrown across the chair, and a stack of untouched mail rested beside it. He was still wearing his dress shirt, incongruously paired with frayed sweats.

 

“You’re drunk.” Olivia bit off the words, working hard to keep her voice flat. She was way too tired to fight with him.

 

“So what?”

 

The smell of beer hit her again, and she pushed aside the thought of what it might be like to kiss him after he’d swallowed a bottle in less than a minute. The smell hung in the air nevertheless.

 

Warm. Sexy. Distracting.

 

 _Fuck_.

 

Annoying. Infuriating. Stupid.

 

“So why didn’t you just go to bed and save me the bother of driving all the way over here to give you files you’re clearly in no shape to work on?” She shifted her weight to her other foot, her heart beating faster than normal. “They were sitting on your desk, Elliot. Ready for you to crack open first thing tomorrow. I’m going home.” But she didn’t move yet, not sure what she was waiting for.

 

“You’re here now. At least give me the files.” He held out his hand, proud that his words weren’t slurred. What the hell did she know about whether he could work after a few beers? He just wanted her to go away, with her condescending expression and the body spray that made him feel even fuzzier and more disconnected than he already did. He reached for the small stack of manila folders.

 

“Fine.” She shoved them toward him, in such a hurry to drop them and leave that her fingers released before his lagging reflexes could kick in, and the files slid to the floor, the papers inside escaping in a swish of floating whiteness and type. “Shit,” she muttered under her breath, followed by an even softer “Sorry,” as she automatically leaned over to pick them up. Elliot leaned forward at the same moment, but miscalculated the distance, and his forehead knocked into hers with a sickening crack.

 

“Goddammit Elliot!” She stood up, her face white with pain, her hand instantly rubbing the point of contact.

 

“Fuck, Liv. I’m sorry. Sit down.” He stepped carefully forward, almost touching her arm before deciding that any physical contact might be risky right now. Despite the fact that the throbbing in his head was making him vaguely nauseous, he suddenly wanted only to make up for all of this – his adolescent descent into the bottle, her unnecessary trip to his place when she was running on empty. The fact that they hadn’t had a real conversation in weeks. He was surprised when she actually did as he asked and moved a few steps toward the couch. She sank into the cushions and pressed both hands to her forehead, rubbing her skin in slow circles. Still in a haze, Elliot tried to think of the appropriate response here. What did Kathy do when the kids smacked their heads into things? _Ice. Right._

 

“Let me get you some ice.” He turned toward the kitchen.

 

Olivia stood up much too suddenly, and the room morphed into waves for a moment before righting itself. “No,” she said firmly. “I’m going home. Now. We can pick all this up tomorrow. I’m fine.”

 

Even years later, Elliot would never arrive at a concrete conclusion regarding the events that followed her words. He remembered his hand closing gently over her upper arm, hearing his own voice as if it were coming from another direction, saying something about how she couldn’t go home like this. He remembered his complete surprise when he pulled her around to face him and saw that her eyes were filled with tears. He remembered looking at her lips, just for a second. And he remembered thinking, as he let go of her arm, put his hands on her face, his thumbs on her cheeks, and pulled her toward him, that he had to be the biggest idiot in this hemisphere, because any minute now she was going to hit him so hard that he’d have bruises for weeks.

 

But she didn’t hit him.

 

For Olivia, her memory always resurrected the next few hours as a series of snapshots, rather than a functioning narrative that made sense in normal time.

 

The smell of beer inside her mouth now, rolling off of Elliot’s tongue as it touched hers. The softness of her hair slipping back to her neck as her shirt came over her head. Her fingers clumsy at Elliot’s buttons, reaching for the skin underneath, which felt unnaturally hot to her. Elliot’s mouth on her stomach, as she tried to say something that became meaningless before the thought was fully formed. Walking backwards down the short hallway to Elliot’s bedroom, his voice rumbling against her chest. _Just move, Liv. I don’t wanna stand up anymore_. The way they hadn’t even pulled back the covers, falling onto the bedspread in a tangle of confused messages and lost words. Elliot’s weight on top of her, inside, all over. Her body trembling and she couldn’t make it stop.

 

Then, quiet. Stillness. His finger tracing her cheek. His voice. “Slow down.”

 

_Okay._

_Tell me how._

_Here?_

_Yes._

_Like that?_

_God._

Finally, the exhilarating sensation of falling and flying up at the same time, followed by more quiet. Sweat. She could hear them both breathing, the rhythm improbably in synch. And for the briefest moment in time, she didn’t think about consequences. Or mistakes. Or inevitability.

_________________

 

Elliot stared out the tiny plane window, wishing he found the pinkish-white clouds below more interesting to look at, wondering why he hadn’t bought a book at the airport, and cursing Cragen for getting him the middle seat. He had to pee, but he wouldn’t have gotten up even if his boss had been kind enough to book him the aisle. He refused to use airplane restrooms. Something about the fact that you couldn’t even turn around in the damn things, the metallic surroundings, and the constant swish of air coming from an unidentifiable place creeped him out. So he shifted in his seat and took another swallow of seltzer, gazing at the latch on the tray in front of him and trying to prep questions for his interrogation of this Cooper asshole. It worked for about a minute before his mind drifted back to last night.

 

The image of Olivia, crossed legged on his bed, wearing nothing but one of his long-sleeved t-shirts. He’d reached over and pulled her hair out of the back of his shirt, and she’d looked at him with. . . hell if he knew. Embarrassment? Appreciation? Enjoyment?

 

 _The case. The interrogation. Questions. Facts._ He gulped down a large amount of seltzer, realizing only after he’d swallowed that this wasn’t going to help him with his airplane bathroom issues.

 

“Are you flying home?”

 

Elliot had completely forgotten that there were other people on the plane; his head snapped up in surprise. He turned toward the source of the voice and found himself staring into the unusually bright green eyes of the young woman next to him – obviously the reason he hadn’t scored the aisle seat. She must have been eighteen or nineteen. Elliot cleared his throat and worked to remember the rules of idiotic small talk.

 

“Uh, no. Work.” He knew his reply was terse, but wasn’t sure what else he could add. The expected response was, “And you?” But he didn’t care where she was going and he didn’t want to keep talking to her.

 

She didn’t take the hint. Shrugging out of her sweatshirt to reveal a very low-cut tank top, she asked, “What do you do?”

 

 _I tell teenage girls who remind me of my daughters to put on more clothes_.

 

“I’m a cop.”

 

“Really? You must have a ton of amazing stories.” Her voice lowered, and it suddenly hit Elliot full force that she was actually flirting with him. He dug a fingernail into his palm and resisted the urge to tell her to put the sweatshirt back on.

 

“Sorry,” he replied, his voice flat and even more cold than he’d intended. “I work computer crimes. Ride a desk all day. First trip I’ve taken since I started the job thirty years ago.”

 

This time she got it. The flash of interest vanished from her eyes, and she said dismissively, “Huh. Well good luck with that then,” before retreating into the comfort of her iPod. Elliot’s cheeks hurt from the effort of maintaining a straight face.

 

He studied the pattern embossed on the napkin under his drink and wondered when he’d hit the point where an attractive young woman hitting on him made him feel dirty rather than flattered. He considered how Olivia would have mocked him if she were here, then hated himself for his sudden inability to go for three seconds without thinking about her. Of course, given the surreal nature of the past twenty-four hours, he was probably being too hard on himself if he expected an instant return to business as usual. He leaned back and closed his eyes, and if he hadn’t known better, he would have sworn that the flirty girl next to him was wearing Olivia’s body spray.

 

_________________

 

Elliot detached himself from Olivia’s body, instantly aware of all the things he hadn’t noticed when they’d tripped into his bedroom in a fevered haze. There were dirty clothes strewn across the chair for his computer desk. A half-full coffee cup on his night table, flanked by three cough drop wrappers. The morning paper lay in sections on the floor. The headache that seemed to have magically vanished long enough for him to – well, long enough – had returned with a vengeance. However, his body felt relaxed and almost floaty, a sensation violently at odds with the abject chaos in his mind. He didn’t have the courage to look at Olivia yet, so he took several deep breaths and tried not to remember that both of them were naked on his bedspread and it was getting chillier by the moment as the sweat evaporated on his cooling skin. When he was on his seventh long inhale, he heard her voice.

 

“God this is weird.” He could hear her shifting to face him.

 

 _Just roll the fuck over. Right now_. He turned on his side, propping his head on his elbow and rubbing his free hand over the stubble he hadn’t bothered to shave in days. “Uh, yeah. It really is.” _Shit_. He wished he could think of new curse words.

 

Olivia pushed herself upright, briskly rubbing the back of her arms, and suddenly Elliot realized that at least he could find something to do – take action to temporarily limit the need for conversation. “You’re freezing. I’ll grab you a shirt.” He pulled his discarded sweats off the floor and yanked them on as he moved toward the dresser. He riffled through his stuff until he found a long-sleeved t-shirt that he thought might not be _too_ huge, then walked back to the bed and handed it to her.

 

She slipped it over her head, mumbling, “Thanks” into the fabric as she yanked it down. Without thinking, he reached toward her and pulled her hair out of the back of his shirt, letting the strands drop onto the navy fabric. She looked at him for a second and said, the corners of her mouth twitching just slightly. “Um, you could hand me my underwear, too.”

 

Elliot was grateful for the dark, because he could feel the heat rising in his face the moment she spoke. What the hell had snapped in his brain? But he did as she asked, and after a moment, located her plain blue bikini hidden underneath his t-shirt. He handed it to her without comment and sank down on the edge of the bed, rolling his head to fight the throbbing pain in his neck and temples. He could hear her rustling on the comforter and he said quietly, “Do me a favor?”

 

Her voice was soft. Tired. “Okay.”

 

“Don’t leave.” He turned to look at her, expecting to see her pulling on her jeans, but instead, found her nestled underneath the covers of his bed.

 

“I wasn’t going to.” She looked up at him, meeting his gaze directly. “This is enough of a mess without me walking out.” She glanced toward the door, then back at him. “But you have to do me a favor, too.”

 

“Name it.” The guilt was already beginning to hit him full force. He’d been drunk. Without all that beer he never would have. . .

 

“I can’t talk about this right now, Elliot. Maybe tomorrow. But not now.”

 

He opened his mouth to argue, but closed it instantly. After a beat, he said, “You want some decaf?”

 

She grinned, pulling the covers even closer to her chin as she stretched out beneath them. “Yeah. That sounds great.”

 

_________________

 

“Would you like some more seltzer?” Elliot opened his eyes to meet the blandly cheerful gaze of the flight attendant standing in front of her beverage cart. He shot a look to his left and observed that iPod girl was already working on what had to be her third Sprite. Clearly she didn’t share his distaste for airplane restrooms.

 

“No. Thanks. I’m fine.”

 

“Let me know if you need anything else.” The attendant moved her pasted-on smile to the next row.

 

 _I need to get the hell home and sort out the fucking mess I’ve just made of my partnership. Somehow I don’t think seltzer’s gonna help._ He leaned his had back into the excessively stiff headrest of the plane seat and abandoned the effort to stop thinking about last night.

 

_________________

 

After two cups of decaf each, they were both buried underneath the several layers of covers that decorated Elliot’s bed, though their bodies were easily two feet apart, even at the closest point. Olivia’s left hand rested on the bed, loosely holding the remote. Onscreen, a woman jumped out of an SUV to vomit by the side of the road, while her revolted-looking “date” stared disgustedly in the other direction.

 

“Are we watching this for a reason?” Elliot muttered, his voice gravelly with exhaustion. “And what are those bubbles that keep popping up on the screen?”

 

“I don’t _watch_ this show,” Olivia retorted. “There’s nothing on!”

 

“Well keep going or turn it off.” Elliot closed his eyes. Felt himself begin to drift.

 

“Fine.” She said nothing more, but pushed the remote so hard that he could hear the button depressing. He faded out to the rhythmic click of the cable switching channels.

 

_________________

 

 _BING_. Elliot’s eyes flew open again, as he tried to identify the irritating noise. A disembodied voice floated through the loudspeakers above his head. “We are now making our descent into Denver International Airport. We will arrive in approximately twenty minutes. The current temperature in Denver is 65 degrees under sunny skies. Please remain seated for the remainder of the flight, and thank you for flying Southwest Airlines."

 

Elliot stretched his legs forward, pushing his feet beneath the seat in front of him. Ipod girl had fallen asleep, and he grinned slightly when he noticed that she must have succumbed to the plane a/c, because her sweatshirt was back on.

 

Making a mental note not to drink _anything_ on the return trip, he shoved his shirtsleeve up and peered at his watch, trying to decipher the numbers despite the reflective glare from overhead. 4:30. They were only giving him half an hour for the interview. In just over two hours, he’d have an excuse to call. . .

 

_________________

 

Elliot startled abruptly awake, sweaty and disoriented. The light from the television flickered in unpredictable patterns, but the room was silent. He glanced quickly at the other side of the bed, and when he saw that Olivia was still there, that she’d done as he asked, he couldn’t decide whether to be relieved or terrified.

 

He stared at the ceiling, listening to her breathing next to him, the soft evenness of it. He’d seen her sleep in the crib dozens of times over the years, but this was something different. As improbable as it was under the circumstances, she seemed relaxed. In the crib, even in sleep, she was always tense, ready to wake up instantly and rush to another crime scene. But now she was just. . . sleeping.

 

Unlike him.

 

He tucked his arms behind his head and squinted at the TV screen, wondering if she had fallen asleep to that dating show or something even more stupid. But there were Humphrey Bogart and Ingrid Bergman, arguing passionately beside an airplane. The end of _Casablanca_. Elliot reached over and carefully pulled the remote from her fingers. He clicked off the TV, leaving the room in near total darkness, the only illumination a small beam from the night light in his bathroom.

 

He rolled to his side, pressing himself into the pillow as he heard Olivia mumble something in her sleep and turn slightly towards him. He thought about tomorrow. About how it would be perfect if just this once, he could keep the sun from rising until he had a _plan_. About barriers and safeguards and walls and how sometimes, none of those things helped a goddamm bit. And finally, about the fact that, even with the unbelievable awkwardness, he liked having her here. A lot.

 

He didn’t go back to sleep for a long time.

 

_________________

 

Elliot slid into the driver’s seat of his rental and slammed the door shut. Hard. He briefly considered doing it again, but stopped short when he pondered Cragen’s reaction if the car was messed up after being in Elliot’s possession for less than an hour. The taupe Chevy Impala smelled as if its last occupant had been fond of cheesesteaks; even though he was starving, the greasy onion scent made him want to get out and walk.

 

But he didn’t. He flipped open his cell and pressed speed dial for the precinct, not sure even as he hit the button whether Olivia was the first or last person he wanted to answer.

 

 _Ring. Ring. Ring._ Elliot rubbed vigorously at a nonexistent stain on his pants.

 

“Special Victims. Detective Benson.”

 

Elliot grinned. She obviously hadn’t looked at the phone number on the display. “It’s me.”

 

“Hi.” Her voice went immediately softer, and even in the midst of the horrific case he was about to discuss with her, he found himself absurdly pleased by this.

 

Still, first things first. “This Cooper dickhead gave something up after screwing around with me for a few minutes.”

 

“What’s that?” He could hear her pen tapping against the edge of the desk, and he almost laughed at how clearly he could conjure her image, even two thousand miles away.

 

“He knew how all the victims looked without me saying a word. Described them exactly. The red hair, the fact that they were all tall and curvy, the dark eyes, pale skin. Mid-twenties. He’s in solitary and can’t watch television or get the paper, so there’s no way he picked this up from the outside.” Elliot looked out the window, watching the guards walk the perimeter around the prison walls. “So I got in his face until he gave up that Mitchell used to have a stash of photos that fit this prototype. When Mitchell got sprung, he left Cooper the pictures. He gave them to me in exchange for a good word with the parole board next year. It’s not much, but it’s enough for Casey to get a search warrant for this guy’s apartment. Maybe once you get in there, you can find something more than the circumstantial shit we have so far.”

 

“I’ll call Casey right now.” But she didn’t hang up the phone.

 

His watched ticked rhythmically. “When are you going home, Liv?”

 

“Couple hours. Why?” He didn’t hear the pen tapping anymore.

 

“Will you. . . “ He paused, the prison siren piercing across the parking lot even with all the doors shut tight. “Will you call? When you get home? I’ll be at the hotel. It doesn’t. . ” _Shit he was bad at this._ “Doesn’t matter what time it is. Just . . . call.”

 

Silence. He could feel the pulse in his fingertips as he waited for her to say something. But it was Cragen’s voice that vibrated through the speaker at alarming decibels.

 

“Olivia. Is that Elliot? What’s up with this Mitchell thing? Casey’s on hold, asking if we’ve got anything new. She doesn’t want to try rousting a judge at midnight.”

 

“I’ve gotta go, Elliot. I’ll brief Cragen. Call if you think of anything else and fax the pictures as soon as you get to the hotel.”

 

Her voice was so neutral that he jammed his hand into the steering wheel, biting his lip when it hurt more than he had anticipated. “Liv.”

 

“What?”

 

“Will you?”

 

“Yeah. I will.” The decisive click of the receiver hitting the cradle reverberated in his ear.

 

_________________

 

He was hungry and tired, but Elliot still sat in the prison parking lot for over an hour, absently watching the guards and inmates as they milled about in the prison yard, gradually drifting inside as dusk began to fall. He didn’t notice that it was dark until a spotlight from one of the towers arced across the parking lot. Elliot tracked it with his eyes and wondered why he was still sitting here, in the shitty Impala that smelled like rotting onions.

 

All day, a memory had been playing at the back of his mind, never moving quite far enough out of his subconscious for him to acknowledge or make sense of it. But now, as he rolled down the window and let the cooling evening air drift into the car, the focus suddenly tightened and the elusive memory snapped clearly into view.

 

When he was fifteen or sixteen, before Kathy, or kids – real responsibility of any kind – he and three of his friends had taken a spur of the moment camping trip on a weekend in early November. None of them knew shit about camping. When they drove for several hours and then hiked to their destination, sweaty and thirsty and a lot more exhausted than any of them would admit, they discovered the amazing fact that it was a lot colder in the mountains than it was in the city.

 

But they’d made the best of it. Figured out how to get a fire going, roasted hot dogs and drank a lot of beer. When they finally crawled into their much too thin sleeping bags, his buddies had fallen asleep instantly, but even with his muscles aching and his eyes burning from smoke and exhaustion, Elliot stayed awake.

 

He stayed awake, shivering in his sleeping bag, looking up at the stars – the stars that you could never _see_ in the city. He listened to the wind whipping through the pine trees and the far off sounds of animals and birds he wouldn’t have had a clue how to identify, and suddenly, a sensation washed over him for which he didn’t even have a name. He waited quietly, the rush of a nearby creek relaxing him even through the shivering, and suddenly it hit him.

 

_Freedom. He felt free._

 

His mind back in the present, Elliot finally figured out why he’d thought of that ridiculous camping trip for the first time in twenty-five years. Because last night, for the smallest slice of a moment, before he could think about repercussions, guilt, responsibility, or baggage, he’d felt that way with Olivia.

 

_________________________

By the time Olivia jammed her key into the deadbolt on her apartment door, the “couple hours” she’d mentioned to Elliot had ballooned into more like five. It was almost midnight. Even the four Advil she’d chased with half a cup of cold tea hadn’t completely removed the throbbing pain in her temples, and her stomach had been trying to digest itself since approximately nine. As the lock clicked open, she half-smiled at the realization that she hadn’t eaten today. At all. Ever since this case had started, Elliot had been dropping food on her desk, food that she consumed without thinking or tasting. But it must have done something for her, because she hadn’t felt this shitty in weeks. And if her memory regarding the contents of her fridge was even remotely accurate, she was pretty much screwed. Pizza that had to be two weeks old. A couple of beers. Had she bought bread? She couldn’t remember. _Wonderful._

 

She closed and locked the door behind her, kicked off her shoes, and immediately went to the bedroom to shed the clothes she’d been wearing since seven a.m. Back in the living room, in sweats and a wrinkled flannel pajama shirt she’d dug out of her bottom drawer, she stared at the phone on her coffee table, as if maybe looking at it long enough would make it disappear.

 

It didn’t disappear. It sat there, black and silent, mocking her with the knowledge that she was too nervous to grab it and fucking pick it up. Nervous about calling her partner of eight years. Had it not been for the fallout of the case, combined with the escalating pain in both her stomach and her head, she might have laughed out loud.

 

Well.

 

He could wait five more minutes. She wandered into the kitchen, aimlessly opening cupboards in search of something that would boost her blood sugar at least enough to let her sleep. Finally, with a defeated sigh, she grabbed the jar of creamy Skippy, pulled a spoon from the drawer, and dug out a huge glob. She took a large lick before twisting the lid closed and sticking the jar back in its place, then grabbed a Diet Coke from the fridge and walked slowly into the living room. She threw herself sideways onto the couch.

 

The phone hadn’t moved.

 

As she licked the peanut butter off the cool metal, Olivia listened to the silence around her. There was no music. No TV. It was so late that even the muffled sounds from her neighbors that sometimes drifted through the walls had long since subsided. Twenty-four hours ago, she would have found the silence peaceful. Comforting. An oasis of sensory deprivation after the relentless bombardment of input she received every minute she was on the job.

 

Now it did nothing except make her mind wander into dangerous territory, places she didn’t want to go after a hard case had finally cracked. After she’d fucked her partner. _I fucked my partner_. She licked more peanut butter and closed her eyes, pressing her head back into the couch.

 

In a fraction of a moment, she was back in Elliot’s bed, watching a muted Ingrid Bergman pull a gun on Humphrey Bogart, while Elliot breathed heavily and evenly next to her. And while Olivia had spent almost every second since then trying to convince herself otherwise, the truth was unavoidable now, in the oppressive silence of her small apartment.

 

She had liked it.

 

_She had liked it. The decaf. Elliot’s shirt. Having his hands and his mouth all over her. Telling rationality to fuck itself for once. Arguing over the television. Falling asleep in his bed. Hearing the ridiculous sexiness of his morning voice as she pulled on her jeans and told him goodbye. He’d rolled over and smiled at her, his jaw stubbly and his left cheek creased from being pressed into the pillow. “See you at work, Liv.” How the hell could he make that sound like a goddamn proposition?_

 

Tasting metal, Olivia opened her eyes and realized that the peanut butter was gone. She popped the Diet Coke open, swallowed a third of it so quickly that her throat burned, and reached for the phone.

 

________________

 

Elliot lay beneath the cheap, slippery, hotel covers, his fingers laced behind his head, and contemplated the pattern on the ceiling above him. There was an amoeba-like stain that had probably resulted from water damage. The whole ceiling was decorated with the textured paint that had been popular in the eighties, and Elliot had to smile at Cragen’s strict adherence to budget rules. After taking a steaming shower (with his cell phone perched on the sink, gathering condensation in the humid room), Elliot had quickly discovered that if he turned on the heat at all, the tiny room became a furnace, so he had the covers up to his chin, even though they smelled funny.

 

He’d given up channel-surfing around ten, because the barrage of idiocy that was television only made him more jittery. At ten-thirty, he’d gotten out of bed and done a hundred pushups, relishing the warmth and the momentary diversion of physical exertion. At eleven, he’d called Maureen and heard about how much her geology final sucked, and how she’d probably be up all night because she had a ten page paper due for poli-sci. The whole time, he’d listened for the tiny, unobtrusive beep of the call waiting, but it never came. For forty-five minutes, he’d looked at the clock approximately every fifteen seconds. Now he just lay motionless, exhausted but fully awake, knowing that she’d call – even if she said nothing about the night before – because no matter how fucked up things were, she wasn’t the type to start playing mind games with him.

 

Elliot drew in a deep breath, amused by the realization that he should have spent the past three and a half hours figuring out what to say to her when she _did_ call, rather than marking the passing of each second in nervous anticipation. He had no idea how to account for what had happened the night before, and he was guessing that she didn’t either. Putting aside the sex itself, which had been. . . . _fuck_. He forced his mind to do a quick u-turn and leave that one alone. But afterwards. The two of them in his bed. Just. . . there. How could something feel so indescribably awkward and so incredibly familiar at the same time?

 

 _Ring. Ring._ He knew who it was without looking at the LCD. “Stabler.”

 

“Hey.”

 

“Hey.” His heart rate doubled, making him feel momentarily lightheaded. When had he regressed to high school?

 

“You were right about the warrant.” He could hear the exhaustion in her voice, but he chose not to comment, waiting for her to continue. “We found photographs of Andrea Costello and Leslie Harper in Mitchell’s apartment. There were several others. . . “ Her voice trailed off, and he could hear her taking several deep, slow breaths. Maybe he was losing it from sleep deprivation, but it crossed his mind how ridiculous it was that the two of them tried so hard to pretend that these cases didn’t pull out their insides, carve them into tiny shards, and stick them back in without sutures. Why wouldn’t she let her voice crack on the goddamn phone?

 

The sound of her now steady words yanked him back into the conversation. “Four others. No ID, but when Fin got Mitchell into interrogation, he cracked in less than five minutes. He was writing out a confession when I left. So he’s giving up the names. I wanted to stay, but. . . ” She broke off again, this time for longer. Elliot could hear her swallowing on the other end of the line. “Cragen told me to go home.”

 

Silence. Elliot rubbed his hand against the blanket until the friction began to hurt. Something momentarily messed with the signal and a soft burst of fuzz interrupted the quiet. For the second time in twenty-four hours, he desperately wished that he had a way with words, that the right thing to say would magically appear in his head, custom designed for each new situation.

 

But there wasn’t any magic for this, and he knew it.

 

“I’m so tired, El.”

 

Five syllables, but suddenly he couldn’t breathe. If he’d been in doubt that last night had changed _something_ , the doubt exploded right there. _Fuck fuck fuck fuck fuck_. He had to respond, and quickly, because yesterday she never would have said those four words and in about ten seconds she was going to take them back if he didn’t return the serve.

 

“I know,” he managed, his voice sounding as if it were being shoved through a meat grinder. _I know_.

 

More silence. But this time, she let herself speak before the tremor was completely under control. “Let’s talk about something else, okay?”

 

“Yeah.” Elliot stared at the blank black square of the television that sat in front of him. “Cragen got me a really shitty hotel room.”

 

Olivia made an ambiguous noise that could have been a laugh or a sob. “I’m sure he did. Gross smelling blankets and all?”

 

“Sure. They come with the continental breakfast.”

 

“Stale donuts and those tiny boxes of cornflakes. Why don’t they ever have skim milk?”

 

She was trying. He had to give her that. But her voice was still pitched at least three notes higher than normal, and despite the intermittent blips of static that plagued even the best cell connections, he could hear the strain. Had he been in the room with her, he wouldn’t have let it go this time. But while he couldn’t bring himself to push her on the phone, he was tapped out on discussing donuts.

 

“That’s all I’ve got on breakfast, shitty hotels, and anything related to Cragen’s number crunching.” He glanced down at his hand, surprised to find that he’d actually made a raw place below his left thumb.

 

 _Dive right in Stabler. Only gets harder the longer you put it off._ “Liv.” His voice was softer now, as if just the thought of changing the subject had relaxed his vocal cords. “Last night. . . I didn’t.” _Shit_. He knew he should have gone over it in his head. Rehearsed. “I was mad. About the case. And then all that beer. I wasn’t. . . thinking.”

 

What the hell was he saying? The words coming out of his mouth didn’t even resemble the sensations swimming in his head, and he opened his mouth to try again, nonetheless filled with the sickening knowledge that he was only going to dig himself deeper. This is why he had never talked to Kathy. Words didn’t come out like he meant them. What he said wasn’t what he thought and when he tried to clarify. . . But meanwhile she was still silent on the other end of the line, so he plunged forward. “If I’d been thinking instead of reacting, I would have let you go. But it was all. . . fuzzy. . . “ He trailed off, his mind frantically trying to regroup.

 

“You had sex with me because you drank too much beer?”

 

Damn she could be direct when she wanted to. “No!” He paused. “Well yes. But that’s not what. . . “

 

She cut him off, and this time, all the emotion had emptied from her voice. “I can’t hear this right now, Elliot. I’m not trying to hang up on you, but I need this conversation to be finished until tomorrow. I’ll call you in the morning. Night.” She disconnected before he had the chance to take a breath, let alone expel a speech sound.

 

_Well. You really hit that out of the park._

He slammed the cell onto the desk beside his bed. If he had faith in nothing else on the planet, he knew one thing with alarming certainly. She wasn’t calling back tonight.

 

He smashed his fist viciously into the spare pillow. Five times. Then, unaccountably sweaty and slightly nauseous, he went into the bathroom to rub cold water on his face. Within five minutes, he was back on the bed, in the exact position he’d been in before, staring at the dated textured ceiling and wishing for a split second that he were a politician, so that when he created a complete mess by perfectly distorting what he meant to say, there would be someone to step out after him, rephrase it flawlessly, and put everything back the way it was supposed to be. However the fuck _that_ was.

 

_________________

 

Two hours later, Olivia sat cross-legged on her bed, her comforter loosely pulled over her thighs, eating stale Ritz crackers from the box, working on her third Diet Coke, and listening to Sarah McLachlan while watching a rerun of _Love Boat_ on mute. She’d cruised right past exhaustion into that fuzzy stage where you randomly realize you’ve lost ten or fifteen minutes even though you’re not asleep. Her eyes swept over the blue comforter in her lap, and she felt absurdly proud that she’d avoided dropping a single crumb by shoving the crackers into her mouth whole.

 

While the insomnia was partially entertaining in her mental fog, there was also a downside to all this wakefulness.

 

She had time to think.

 

When the case had consumed every waking moment, it had also mercifully spared her from pausing to consider how the hell she had, in a fit of spectacularly bad judgment, ended up having spur of the moment (and entirely unprotected) sex with her partner. Which, to help her feel even better about herself, he had now chalked up to a drunken lapse of reason.

 

Now she remembered why she’d given up on dating, why sometime in the past year, it had become more fun for her to bring home Netflix than to bring home a guy. She didn’t need any of this shit. The self-pitying descent into depressing music and nutrient-free comfort food. The cognitive dissonance of wanting him to call back so badly that she found herself occasionally holding her breath (and having to remind herself to knock it off), and yet simultaneously wishing that she never had to talk to him again. Ever.

 

The paper waxy against her fingers, she wadded up the empty brown wrapper that had encased the last of the crackers, took aim at the trashcan inside the door of her bathroom, and missed. _Figured_. She swallowed the last of the now slightly flat Diet Coke and flipped off the light, too enervated to get up and brush her teeth or wash her face. She’d hate herself in a couple hours, but fuck it.

 

Just as she rolled over and hugged the extra pillow into her chest, her cell rang, muffled by its position underneath the comforter. She listened to the rhythmic chime for a second, wishing like hell that she wouldn’t answer. Knowing she would. Her thumb stabbed ferociously at an unknown key.

 

“I said I’d call in the morning. What?”

 

When he spoke, Elliot’s voice held so much controlled anger that Olivia unconsciously pulled the phone a few inches further from her ear. “Shut up, Liv. If you hang up on me in the middle of what I’m about to say, don’t bother to call tomorrow. It will probably take less than two minutes, and if you can’t give me that, then screw you.”

 

She said nothing, in part because her chest felt tight and panicky, and in part because she halfway believed that if she spoke he’d hang up.

 

“Okay.” He paused, and she could just picture him trying to get sufficient control, to calm himself enough to sound rational. She observed that expression at least once a day on the job, but it had been awhile since she’d been the one to make him this pissed off. “What I said earlier. It. . . it wasn’t even in the same solar system as what I was thinking. I just. . . it isn’t what I meant. At all.”

 

Olivia dug her fingers firmly into her comforter and waited for him to continue, her heart racing at nauseating speed.

 

“The beer, Liv. The fucking beer. It had nothing to do with what happened, except that maybe it. . . shaved off the self control I might have had without it. It kept me from putting on. . . . uh. . . . brakes that if I were being honest with myself, I didn’t want to put on anyway.”

 

He was breathing so hard that she could hear it through the phone. “Fuck it, Olivia. Here it is. The condensed version. I wanted to have sex with you. God did I _want_ to have sex with you. I still do. I’m going to bed, but I had to clear that up first. I’ll talk to you in the morning. Goodnight.” She heard the click of his finger on the end call button, and then the eerie silence of a terminated phone call when you haven’t hung up on your end yet.

 

She held the phone in her palm and looked at it long after the LCD had gone dark.

 

________________

 

Elliot wedged himself so far down in the small hotel room bed that his feet hung off the end. All the adrenaline that had fueled his impulsive phone call had evaporated, and the exhaustion that had hovered at the borders of his existence for a week or ten days chose now to strike hard. He closed his eyes, his muscles finally relaxing even against the uncomfortable mattress. An unexpected peace swirled at the edges of his mind as consciousness slipped away, because for the first time in ages, he’d chosen to be honest. Not silent. Evasive. Combative. Well, okay. Maybe a little combative. But still honest, in the most basic sense.

 

Now it was her turn.

 

________________

 

Noise. Something was making noise, and it wouldn’t stop. Without opening his eyes, Elliot reached for the pillow on the other side of the bed and pulled it over his head. The noise diminished, then stopped, only to start up again moments later.

 

His cell. Ringing. Crap. He couldn’t even remember where he had thrown it after his outburst. Pushing himself up on his elbows, he peered around the darkened room, trying to focus his thoughts enough to pinpoint the source of the ringing. Finally he saw the reflective grey object on the other side of the desk. With a muffled curse, he stretched out to grab it before yanking the covers back up. The damn room was arctic.

 

“Stabler,” he mumbled.

 

“Do you wanna run that by me again?”

 

“No. I’m sleeping.”

 

“Elliot. . .” Her voice was quiet, and in the silence that followed his name, he could hear all the questions they never quite had the courage to ask out loud. The questions they’d marched right up to outside Rebecca Clifford’s hospital room, only to discover that the answers were terrifying enough to send each of them running for cover. Him right out of the hospital and her right out of the unit. Of course he had no idea why he was thinking about any of this, when he could feel her presence on the other end of the line, waiting for him to say something that would make sense of this mess.

 

“I think I’ve said plenty for tonight. I uh. . . didn’t mean to sound quite that pissed off earlier.” He was so tired that he felt as if he had to stretch for each word, that each sentence he successfully formed was an impressive feat of concentration. “Go to sleep. We’ll pick this up tomorrow. I’ll be back by late afternoon.”

 

“I’m not tired.”

 

“Well I am.” He rubbed his eyes with his free hand, trying to think of a fresh angle of approach. “I’m. . . I’m bad enough at this crap face to face. I think I just proved that the phone makes it worse. Just. . . wait until we can deal with it in the same room.”

 

Her voice dropped even lower, almost a whisper against his ear. “What the hell was that? We didn’t. . . even use anything.”

 

“I know.”

 

“You’ve got the beer. What’s my excuse?”

 

“Head injury?” he murmured, knowing he sounded like a jackass, but wishing he could somehow keep this light. Keep her from asking the question that he knew was inevitable at some point.

 

“So what happens now?”

 

Yep. That one. He winced, although the light in the hotel room hadn’t changed even incrementally. This was the part where he was supposed to say exactly the right thing, like Humphrey Bogart at the end of _Casablanca_. The fact that he made that connection at the moment would have made him laugh if Olivia hadn’t been waiting in the expanding quiet.

 

“Right now, I’m going back to sleep. Since it’s. . . “ He held the phone away from his face far enough to see the display. “Almost five a.m.”

 

“Yeah. It’s late.” She still didn’t hang up though, and Elliot waited, because he could tell just from her breathing that she had something else to say. “Hey El?”

 

“Hmmm?” He was halfway drifting off with the phone against his ear, the sound of her voice calming now, when earlier it had scared the shit out of him.

 

“Do you remember that twenty year service awards dinner Cragen made us go to last year?”

 

 _What the hell?_ “Vaguely. I think I drank three screwdrivers before the opening remarks were done. The rest is a little hazy. You know I hate those things.” He paused, working to sharpen his mental image of the evening she’d mentioned, because he knew she wouldn’t have asked without a reason. “Weren’t you wearing a dark blue dress that was. . . “ He searched for the descriptor. “Sorta shiny?”

 

“That’s probably what you would have called it.” Even though she sounded amused and almost relaxed now, there was something else in her tone – something he couldn’t place – that unsettled him, made him wonder where she was going with this.

 

“So what about it?” His words were beginning to run together, and he shook his head quickly, which made him feel sick but had the desired effect of pumping up his consciousness level another notch or two.

 

“Nothing. Just curious. I’ll talk to you in the morning.”

 

She made no sense. But his body was in open rebellion now, and whatever had prompted the question could wait until he’d slept enough to formulate full sentences. “Night Liv. I’m. . . sorry about earlier.”

 

“I should have let you finish. Night.”

 

He heard the beep of the severed connection, but didn’t even flip his phone closed before he was asleep.

 

________________

 

Olivia lay on her side, her body loosely wrapped around her pillow, watching the brightening rectangle of light that bordered the window. She desperately wanted to go to sleep, to escape for at least a few hours before she had to go back to the precinct and look at the new information on the four unidentified women. She’d have to do interviews – listen to the stories of what Frank Mitchell had done to them. In slow, heart-wrenching detail.

 

Still, right now, as she watched the light spread slowly through her bedroom, her mind wasn’t on the future. It was stuck in an evening just over a year ago, only a couple weeks after the Gitano case. She remembered because she’d still had a scab on her neck; she’d noticed as she got dressed that night, traced her finger over the wound, and tried not to let herself relive those few hours for the thousandth time. Her zipper had gotten stuck and distracted her, and she’d laughed in the bathroom about how funny she must have looked trying to fix it. Not that there was anyone else in the apartment to observe her.

 

Then, for a moment before she walked out the door, she had stared at herself in the mirror, taking in the foreign nature of her appearance. The deep grey eyeliner she’d chosen just for the occasion. The iridescent midnight blue dress that Casey had convinced her to buy, even though it cost four hundred bucks and Olivia thought it was stupid. The dangly silver earrings she’d dug out of an old jewelry box her mother had given her when she graduated from high school.

 

The combined picture had given her the indescribably odd sensation of looking in the mirror and seeing someone else, and although she felt somewhat foolish – both because of her appearance and because it was making her pseudo-philosophical – she’d momentarily wondered what Elliot would think when he looked at her. Whether he’d find the ‘upgraded’ Olivia more interesting than the real thing.

 

________________

 

“Kill me,” Elliot muttered, his face so close to hers that his breath washed down her bare neck and over her shoulder, giving her goosebumps she hoped he wouldn’t notice.

 

She leaned back a touch and raised her eyebrow. “Be sure you don’t breathe on that,” she said dryly, nodding toward the large candle decorating the center of the table. “How much have you had to drink?”

 

“I’m still conscious,” he retorted, draining the last swallow from the tumbler in his left hand. “So not enough.”

 

She grinned, taking a small swallow of her margarita. “You’d better watch it. If you embarrass Cragen in the middle of this thing, he’ll have you on ass duty for a week. Minimum.”

 

Without taking his eyes off hers, Elliot signaled the server for another drink. “No problem. I can join you in computer crimes.”

 

Her hand tightened around the drink that she instantly no longer wanted, the glass cold and damp against her fingers. Even if she’d been able to come up with a smartass comeback to that one, the moment flashed past and was gone. So she said nothing, shifting her gaze to the stage. Suddenly, her stockings felt obnoxiously itchy and she wished she’d left the silver earrings at home. The server arrived and deposited yet another drink in front of Elliot, who lifted it and tossed back more than a third in one swallow. Olivia forced herself to swing her focus to the stage, and away from Elliot, tonight’s pain-in-the-ass lost cause.

 

At the podium, a short dark-haired woman from the 2-4 was introducing one of the honorees for the evening, droning on and on about the wonders of his twenty year service. Olivia’s eyes glazed as she fantasized about walking back into her apartment and ripping off her stockings.

 

“Ladies and gentlemen, Bill Jessup.” Olivia clapped automatically, noticing out of the corner of her eye that Elliot had released his beverage long enough to applaud. A thin, balding man in his early fifties walked to the podium, and something about the way he moved caused Olivia to forget about her stockings, her probably smudging eyeliner, and Elliot’s attitude. Sadness emanated from this man, and Olivia couldn’t figure out how she knew this; she’d never seen him before in her life. Yet there was a quality beyond the sadness. . .

 

He paused at the podium, looking quietly out over the room, which must have held seven or eight hundred people. Finally he cleared his throat and began to speak, his voice only carrying because whoever controlled the mic turned it up almost immediately. “I’m not a speechmaker, and I know that most of you are already drunk enough that the faster we get dinner underway, the better.” The audience laughed politely, but Olivia found that she couldn’t take her eyes off him. There was something. . . . She couldn’t place it.

 

Mr. Jessup continued, his voice slightly stronger now, but not much. “In short, I’m honored to be here, although I can’t believe it’s been twenty years. I’d like to thank Captain Bennet, possibly the only person who’s been here longer than I have.” More polite laughter. Olivia leaned forward, her arms resting lightly on the table.

 

“And I’d like to thank. . . “ Mr. Jessup stopped. Swallowed. Cleared his throat. Tried again. “To thank my wife. She. . . she died last month. It’s kinda funny, because she swore she’d be here. I mean not funny. . . “ He trailed off, but when he began speaking again, his voice held unexpected strength. “What I meant to say is that although I’m the one getting an award here tonight, Christina’s the one who deserves the credit. If it hadn’t been for her, I would have quit the force inside a week.”

 

He paused, leaning into the podium, his eyes far away. Not even entirely sad. Just. . . not _here_. Olivia watched him, mesmerized, wondering what it might feel like to look that way when she thought about someone, or for someone to look that way when he thought about her. She blinked when Mr. Jessup resumed speaking, unaware that her eyes were filled with tears.

 

“Christina hated the fact that I was a cop. Always thought I was gonna get killed. But every night when I came home, ready to give up because it was too hard, there were too many victims, or I couldn’t get the blood out from underneath my fingernails, she was the one who reminded me that if I quit, my replacement might not do it as well as I did. And every day that kept me coming back.”

 

He inhaled, his eyes focused again, his expression suddenly sheepish. “I apologize. I’m going on and on and I haven’t even had my first drink.” Polite but subdued laughter. Another long pause. “But as long as I’ve got the floor for one second, I want to say this. No one survives this job without some kind of connection that goes way beyond the squad room. Doesn’t matter if it’s your wife, your kids, your goddamn fish. It has to be something, or you can’t do it. We all need to know that the job doesn’t fully define us; we all need that person who reminds us. And Tina was mine.” He smiled, his eyes weary, yet oddly warm and contented. “Thank you again. I’ll go get that drink now.”

 

And he stepped down.

 

Olivia’s hand clutched her napkin so tightly that it had turned into a compact ball, which sweat now partially adhered to her palm. Voices jumbled together in her head, confusing yet connected. Mr. Jessup at the podium. _And Tina was mine._ Elliot in the warehouse. _It’s okay. It’s okay._ Where the fuck had that come from?

 

When she finally summoned the courage to turn and look at him, he was gone.

 

________________

 

_Everybody cut everybody cut. . . everybody cut Footloose._

 

Olivia slapped her hand onto the snooze button of her alarm clock, amazed that she’d been so disconnected from reality without actually sleeping. After briefly entertaining the thought of calling Cragen and telling him she’d died, she shoved herself off the bed and shuffled into the bathroom, stripping off her shirt and sweats as she went. She flipped the shower to its hottest setting, scrubbing her teeth vigorously as it warmed up. Finally she pushed aside the curtain and ducked into the spray, rubbing her eyes and watching the clouds of steam that floated this way and that in the tiny room. She’d left the fan off on purpose.

 

And as she stood there, the water beating against her shoulder blades, she knew exactly why she’d thought of Bill Jessup tonight. Of his wife. Of the expression on his face when he said the woman’s name. The palpable. . . she searched for the word. Connection. Love didn’t cover it. _Connection_. Because while there obviously wasn’t any way for her to prove or disprove her theory, she understood now that she’d been wrong then, when she’d felt that wave of despair that the expression he wore had never been hers.

 

In that warehouse, she’d looked at Elliot that way.

 

And he’d looked back.

 

________________

 

 _Bam bam bam bam bam_. Olivia forced her eyes open and took in her surroundings, trying to remember where she was. Right. Her apartment. Her couch. The banging was the door. Before she got up to open it, she glanced at her outfit, because in her current state of mind, she couldn’t be sure she hadn’t fallen asleep in her underwear. Or less. She was that tired. But she seemed to be wearing a long sleeved t-shirt with coffee spilled down the front, and a pair of yoga pants. Good enough. “Coming!” She shuffled to the door, digging the heel of her hand into her eye in an attempt to reduce the visual fog. It didn’t help much.

 

She threw the door open to reveal Elliot, a black duffel bag thrown over his shoulder. An unwelcome flush crept from her neck into her face, and she rubbed her toe into the carpet to distract herself. He looked as if he was waiting for something, so she blurted out, “Are we having a sleepover?” _Nice. Excellent word choice_.

 

“You forgot that I called.” Elliot unslung his duffel, his mouth turned up at the corners, his eyes exhausted but amused. “The connection in Chicago? I missed it?”

 

“Crap.” The mental fog burned away in an instant. “Sorry. Come in.” She stepped back and closed the door behind him as he walked past her, smelling intoxicatingly like cologne and. . . something else. He dropped his bag by the coat closet.

 

“You haven’t slept in two days. Forget it. I just said I’d come by, so. . . “ The rest of his sentence evaporated.

 

“What time is it?” Her hand went instinctively to her wrist, but she must have taken off her watch before collapsing.

 

“A little after ten.” His eyes made a slow circle around her face, absorbing the pallor that makeup couldn’t mask, the lines at the edges of her eyes, where tiny smudges of mascara had congregated. The haunted look she always had after hours of listening to women who had endured things most people never even thought about. He took a step forward, closer now than the accepted rules of human interaction allowed for. Deliberately pushing.

 

She didn’t back up.

 

He never knew what made him say it. Why he asked this time, when on countless, pushed aside (but not forgotten) cases, they’d handled the fallout with a glance, a word, a drink. Five drinks. Or nothing. “Tell me what happened today.”

 

Her eyes widened, and he felt almost sick that a question so seemingly obvious could surprise her that way. Humanity didn’t have a measuring device for the degree to which they were fucked up.

 

“I don’t. . . “ Her voice was scratchy. “It’s finished. You have to be hungry. We can get take-out.” She stared at the flat place her toe had rubbed in the carpet. If she had been playing one of those name-that-cloud games, she would have decided it was a leopard.

 

He stepped even closer, way inside the boundary lines now. “I don’t want take-out, Liv. I want you to stop playing with the carpet, look at me, and tell me about today. One thing. The worst thing.”

 

She wanted to back up so badly; he’d activated all her self-preservation alarms and she felt as if she were suffocating. “Why?”

 

“Because I had too much time to think last night. When I was waiting for you to call. And I need to know that we can still have this conversation. Kathy and I couldn’t.” His voice dropped, almost inaudible now. “Tell me. The worst thing. Please.” _Please._

 

She sucked in a gulp of air and locked her eyes on his, and he felt his chest rearrange as he saw the moment she decided. Decided to do as he asked.

 

“The worst thing? When Lorraine Doherty sat at the table, across from me. She didn’t move. At all.” Olivia stared directly at him, and while her voice didn’t waver as she continued to speak, a tear slipped down toward her chin, followed by another, until there were several dark spots where her t-shirt was damp. “While she told me how Mitchell used the key he’d made when she was at work, came into her apartment at three a.m., woke up her four and seven year old daughters, and forced them to watch. While he raped her and carved some sort of symbol into her arm. They’re still working on the symbol.”

 

She stopped, breathing in erratic gasps. “Is that what you wanted to know?”

 

He opened his mouth, only to discover that his throat was closed. He wanted to reach out and grab her hand, but in their little universe of stoic silence, touch, especially after words like that, was breaking the rules, and he could see on her face that he’d broken enough of them tonight. He counted slowly to twenty in his head, figuring that at least that would prevent him from doing anything else impulsive. In the last twenty-four hours, he’d been impulsive enough for two lifetimes.

 

Olivia pushed impatiently at the remaining tears on her cheeks. “Do you want a soda?”

 

Elliot smiled, genuinely this time, because she’d given him what he wanted. Now he could let it go. “Yeah. Thanks.” He walked over and dropped onto the couch, pushing aside her discarded work clothes. He could hear her dropping ice into glasses, the distinctive snap of the soda cans, and he closed his eyes, picturing what would be taking place at exactly the same time if he had gone home instead of coming here.

 

He saw himself unlocking the door, tossing his bag on the floor, throwing his coat on the chair because he was too lazy to hang it up. He saw himself taking a shower, maybe jacking off if he wasn’t too tired, heating up one of those microwave dinners, and eating it in front of the TV. He saw himself rinsing off a single fork and putting it in the dishwasher, the dishwasher that sometimes took a week or more to fill up now. He saw himself channel surfing for maybe ten minutes, even though he knew that everything on TV sucked, then leafing aimlessly through _Newsweek_ , realizing how much went on in the world that passed him by when he spent eighteen hours a day in the 1-6. Finally, he saw himself brushing his teeth, crawling into bed, rearranging the covers ten or twelve times, flipping from his back to his stomach, and staring at his alarm clock. Because with the exception of last night, the moments before he fell asleep were the ones he dreaded most.

 

This had started long before the implosion of his marriage. He’d learned that it was surprisingly easy to be lonely even with someone in bed right next to you, and consequently, even on the rare nights when he was home early enough to go to bed at a normal time, he’d trained himself to stay downstairs, occupying himself somehow, until Kathy was long asleep. Then he could walk up quietly in the darkness and never have to get near the hard questions. Questions like the one he’d just asked Olivia.

 

“You okay El?” She held a drink out to him, and he took it, watching the bubbles dance on the surface of the caramel liquid.

 

“Yeah. Fine. Tired.”

 

She settled into the couch with her drink in one hand and her other arm curved around her knees. “How was the flight?”

 

“Aside from the part where I waited in Chicago for five hours? Great. I sat next to this woman who was on her way to a knitting contest. The next time Cragen decides to send someone on a recreational interview trip, _you’re_ going.”

 

“I’ll get the flu.” She swallowed the last of her soda and set her glass on the floor, the ice clinking against the sides. Biting the edge of her lip, she said softly, “Elliot, I’m exhausted, but we have to do this. I can’t go to sleep until we just. . . . Come on. Let’s get it over with.”

 

“That was a smooth subject change.” His glass hit the coffee table with a thud, and he turned toward her, trying to remember to keep his hands still so he wouldn’t look as panicked as he felt.

 

“I’m not trying to be smooth. What’s your theory on what happened last night?”

 

“Don’t have one yet.” He swallowed, his mouth dry not seconds after his last sip of soda. “Why? Do you wish we could rewind?”

 

“Is that what you wanna do?”

 

“I asked you first.”

 

“So we’re in grade school now?” She leaned forward, hugging her knees, his question still floating in the air between them. “No. That’s not what I wanna do.”

 

“Me neither.” He paused, silently asking God if – just this once – the concept in his mind could make it out of his mouth mostly intact and semi-intelligible. “Liv, could we just. . . uh . . . try this without a plan? Because. . . my whole life I’ve had a plan. Kathy and I had a plan. I had a career plan. And . . . you know how all of that turned out.” He leaned forward and put his head in his hands for a moment, before turning to look at her again, and this time his expression was so focused that she wanted to back up. But she couldn’t, since the arm of the couch was pressed against her spine, so she hugged her knees tighter and waited for him to continue.

 

 _Say it Stabler. You asked her and she told you the truth, whether she wanted to or not. Your move_. “Liv?”

 

“Hmmm?”

 

“It’s been. . . been a long time since I felt as good as I did last night.”

 

No matter how hard she tried, she couldn’t suppress the grin that washed over her face the moment he stopped speaking. “Really?” _Shit. You sound like you just got back from prom._

 

Elliot cleared his throat, staring at the carpet with intense concentration. “Yeah.” Out of the blue, he realized that God must have listened, because he’d said his piece and she was still sitting there. Definitely time to fold for the evening. He stood up and said quietly, “I’m gonna go. You’re wiped out. Maybe we could have dinner after work tomorrow.” He stepped toward the door, and was about to reach for his bag when he heard her voice.

 

“Hey El?”

 

“What?” He swiveled to face her.

 

“Stay.”

 

His stomach made a funny sideways movement and he felt shaky. “You sure?” He lifted an eyebrow at her, amused by the transparent terror on her face.

 

She rolled her eyes. “Stop looking at me like that. I didn’t say I was gonna have sex with you.”

 

He smiled, one that touched his eyes this time, and Olivia knew she had to be tired, because her throat tightened up again just seeing that look, the one that, in eight years of spending most of her waking hours with this man, she’d probably witnessed fewer than a dozen times.

 

“You didn’t say you weren’t either.”

 

________________

 

In the hushed darkness of Olivia’s bedroom, Elliot lay curled on his side, studying the nape of Olivia’s neck, the place where her hair had fallen away to reveal bare skin. She had crawled in without saying a word and turned away from him, and he had to remind himself of his own words. Remind himself that from here on out, he’d have to accept uncertainty. Let her move back and forth when she felt comfortable, and let himself do the same. He could hear her breathing evening out, and in a flash it hit him that he hadn’t told her the one important thing he’d remembered on the plane.

 

“You still awake?”

 

“No.” He could hear the smile in her voice.

 

“I’ll tell you while you’re sleeping then.” He wiggled the pillow until it fit more comfortably under his head. Her pillows were too squishy.

 

“Mmmkay.”

 

“You asked about the service awards dinner. Whether I remembered.” He felt her stiffen, even though her body didn’t move perceptibly. She said nothing. Waited. “I _do_ remember, Liv. It’s uh. . . not possible to be that drunk. I remember. And uh, so you know, the same goes for me.” He held his breath, not quite able to believe that he’d actually said it.

 

Before he could even register that she was moving, Olivia’s entire body was against his, her arms on his back, her naked thigh around his waist, her lips so close to his mouth that he could smell her toothpaste. It occurred to him that this was the first time he’d touched her since the fevered insanity of last night, and without even thinking, he slipped his hands under her tank top, stroking the skin where her ribs met her back.

 

She didn’t respond for a few moments. When she did, her voice shook, and this time she made no effort to control it. “I thought. . . I thought you just left. That you didn’t. . . even hear. What he said.”

 

Closing the last couple of centimeters between them, Elliot put his lips next to her ear, breathing in the vanilla scent that must have been her shampoo. It reminded him overwhelmingly of last night, but he tried to concentrate on what he knew he needed to say.

 

“No. I heard, Liv. I heard. But. . .  “ He felt her fingers, soft on the muscles of his shoulder. And he thought about how sometimes, even if it’s only for a tenth of a second every decade or two, life could surprise the shit out of you. With the way that even the tiniest flicker of joy . . .

 

He moved her hair off her neck and kissed her there. Once. “But now I’m listening.”

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 


End file.
